Hailstorm at the ILK -Ice-cold hail tests of novel aerospace components

The strike of hailstones can cause serious safety-relevant damage to aircraft and their propulsion systems during operation. Such events represent a central risk for safe air traffic. The energy of the strike and the resulting damage potential depends to a large extent on the speed, diameter and internal structure of the hailstone. When developing innovative design concepts for aviation components, complex, highly dynamic hailstorm scenarios must be taken into account in the design process in order to be able to evaluate resulting mechanical damage or possible impairment of the structure. This is especially true when using new types of lightweight materials. In order to develop robust and efficient design and dimensioning concepts, the experimental validation of such hail strike loading, using hailstones with a diameter of up to 45 millimetres, was conducted at the Institute of Lightweight Structures and Plastics Engineering (ILK) of the TU Dresden on a single-stage high-speed impact test rig. High-speed camera systems, which allow 300,000 images per second, record the extremely brief impact process of a few milliseconds. The ILK is supported in the technical implementation by long-standing partners such as GOM GmbH, High Speed Vision GmbH and an extensive network of experts.
 

Contact persons:
Dipl.-Ing. Holger Böhm, Computational methods and simulation, +49 351 463 38019, holger.boehm1@tu-dresden.de
Dipl.-Ing. Tim Bätzel, Function Integration, +49 351 463 38036, tim-baetzel@tu-dresden.de